Tag: Criminal Justice System

After George Floyd they promised social workers would replace cops — one just got attacked with a sword in Boston – Mass Daily News

Police respond to Hemenway Street near Northeastern University after a man attacked a mental health clinician and officer with a sword. Inset: A George Floyd mural in Berlin by street artist Eme. (Scene photo via Citizen app; mural via Wikimedia Commons)
— Read on www.massdailynews.com/2026/04/05/george-floyd-social-worker-promise-boston-clinician-stabbed-sword-hemenway

We can’t ‘incarcerate our way out of crime.’ But we can deter a lot more of it. – Niskanen Center

A post on X that went viral recently laid out a series of statistics about the percentage of serious crimes — murder, rape, robbery, assault, and so on — that are committed by people with prior arrests. All hovered between 60 percent and 79 percent. The post’s conclusion: “You can incarcerate your way out of crime. Facts.” Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, amplified the post to his hundreds of millions of followers and sharpened the point: “Either incarcerate or innocent people suffer.” To date, these two posts have nearly 50 million views each. 

The claims in these posts are worth unpacking. First, Musk uses the correct metric: Reducing the suffering of innocent people is the proper goal of any criminal justice system, and public safety policy should be evaluated primarily by that standard. Musk is also correct in an important, albeit limited, sense: Failing to incapacitate genuinely dangerous people will lead to some level of crime and suffering that would have otherwise been avoided.

— Read on www.niskanencenter.org/we-cant-incarcerate-our-way-out-of-crime-but-we-can-deter-a-lot-more-of-it/

Buffalo to pay $700k in lawsuit involving police union president : Investigative Post

The City of Buffalo’s law department this week asked the Common Council to approve $1.68 million in settlements to lawsuits against the city — most stemming from encounters between police and civilians.

The largest of the settlements — $700,000 — stems from an incident nearly seven years ago involving the current president of the city’s police union and his partner. 

On Memorial Day 2019, Bruce McNeil was stopped while driving down Broadway by Officer John Davidson — now the president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association — and his partner, Officer Patrick Garry. The officers wouldn’t tell him the reason for the stop, according to McNeil’s court papers, but pulled him out of the car, handcuffed him, put him in the back of their patrol car and searched his vehicle. They found no contraband and let him go.
— Read on investigativepost.org/2026/03/20/city-to-pay-700k-in-police-misconduct-lawsuit/

Escape from New York

“Escape From New York” by Jarrod Shanahan analyzes the 1970s New York City carceral crisis, centering on prisoner-led resistance against the Department of Correction. The text highlights how alleged liberal reforms fueled the expansion of mass incarceration while documenting heroic, rebellious actions from within facilities like Rikers Island.

Read on HERE

Hiring and Retention of State and Local Law Enforcement Officers, 2020

In 2020, general-purpose law enforcement agencies hired 55,000 full-time sworn personnel, but lost 57,400 through resignations, retirements, and other types of separations, resulting in a net loss of 2,400 officers (figure 1). A net loss of 1,500 officers also occurred in 2013, while agencies had net gains in 2003, 2008, and 2016. The largest number of hires occurred in 2016 (63,600), resulting in a net gain of 9,300 officers

Get the report HERE